While it continues to fish for the Big One – it was the company that unlocked SD-Scicon Plc, only to see Electronic Data Systems Corp walk away with the prize, Newbury, Berkshire-based Cray Electronics Holdings Plc has in passing struck a deal to pick up Autofile Ltd, a developer of holiday reservation software, for UKP15.3m in new Cray shares and a dividend from Autofile of UKP1.5m prior to closing. S G Warburg will conditionally place 20.5m new Cray shares to raise UKP12.5m for the vendors and a further 3.1m shares will be placed to raise about UKP1.9m before expenses for Cray. Existing shareholders can exercise their pre-emption rights: they are being offered a chance to subscribe for the new shares on a one for 4.5184 basis at 61 pence a share. Slough-based Autofile complements its travel software – the flagship product is the ATOP Autofile Tour Operator Package with a package of software maintenance and facilities management services for its 90-plus travel trade customers. The company has a sales and software development operation in Atlanta, Georgia, and sales offices in California and in Sydney. It employs 250 people, 218 of them in the UK and did UKP2.25m pre-tax on turnover of UKP16m in the year to December 1991. It had a disappointing year in 1989, when profits fell to UKP929,000, but otherwise the five-year record is unblemished, with the current position built on a base of UKP908,000 pre-tax on turnover of UKP6.7m in 1987. Services, less exposed to economic cycles, now represent 21% of turnover; 21% of turnover also comes from overseas. Net assets are put at UKP4.0m, including UKP1.3m net cash. Autofile’s software current runs on Digital Equipment Corp VAX hardware, and Cray reckons it has the skills in-house to aid the development by Autofile of Unix-based versions of its products. Cray is still thought to want Dowty Communications.
